Friday, December 26, 2008

Prologue to R.O. Blechman's animated television special "Simple Gifts" . This prologue piece is designed by Maurice Sendak, animated by Ed Smith , with watercolor by Sara Calogero. Music by Arnold Black. The entire special was directed by R.O. Blechman. The quality on this clip is not the greatest since it is from an old VHS tape recording of the show. As far as I know PBS has not aired this again in recent times. It's a beautiful Christmas special that really should be released on DVD.

Richard O'Connor has posted an original drawing from this sequence on his blog :

Here are some of the same scenes , but in different form (note that one of the scenes is in much rougher form , so it's interesting to see how he roughed it out first , then tied it down more at a later point) .